Stages on Life’s Way

by Søren Kierkegaard

  Originally there was only one sex, so the Greeks tell us;211 it was the male sex. Gloriously endowed was he, thus doing honor to the gods, so gloriously endowed that the same thing happened to the gods as sometimes happens to a poet who has burned up all his powers in his poetic creation: they became envious of man. Indeed, worse yet, they feared him, feared that he would not voluntarily bow beneath their yoke; they feared, even though groundlessly, that he might even shake the foundations of heaven. Thus they had conjured up a dynamic force they felt scarcely able to control. So there were misgivings and concern in the council of the gods. They had been very extravagant in creating man, which was magnanimous, but now they had to risk everything; it was in self-defense, for everything was at stake—so thought the gods. Man could not be retracted as a poet retracts his thought. He could not be compelled by force, for in that case the gods themselves could have compelled him, but that was the very thing they despaired of doing. He had to be taken captive and compelled by a force that was weaker than his own and yet stronger—and strong enough to compel. What wonderful power that had to be! But necessity teaches even the gods to surpass themselves in inventiveness. They searched and pondered and found. This power was woman, the wonder of creation, even in the eyes of the gods a greater wonder than man, a discovery on which the gods in their naivete could not help congratulating themselves. What more can be said to her honor than that she would be able to do something of which even the gods did not think themselves capable; what more can be said than that she was capable of doing it; how wonderful she must be to be capable of it! This was a stratagem on the part of the gods. The enchantress was created full of deceit; the instant she had cast her spell on man, she transformed [VI 74] herself and made him a prisoner of all the prolixities of finitude. That was what the gods wanted. But is there anything more delicious, more delightful, more enchanting than what the gods, contending for their dominion, thought up as the only thing that could entice man? And it is really so, woman is the one and only, and the most seductive thing in heaven and on earth. By comparison, man is very much inferior.

  And the stratagem of the gods succeeded. But it did not always succeed. In all ages there were some men, individual men, who became aware of the deception. To be sure, they saw her loveliness, more than anyone else, but they suspected the truth of the matter. These I call devotees of erotic love, and I count myself among their number. Men call them seducers; woman has no name for them—to her such a person is unmentionable. These devotees of erotic love are the happy ones. They live more luxuriously than the gods, for invariably they eat only what is more costly than ambrosia and drink what is more delicious than nectar: they eat the most seductive whims of the gods’ most cunning thought; they always eat only the bait. Ah, what incomparable sensual pleasure, what a blissful way to live!—they always eat only the bait—they are never trapped. The other men fall to and eat the bait the way peasants eat cucumber salad and are trapped. Only the devotee of erotic love knows how to appraise the value of the bait, to place an infinite value on it. Woman has an intimation of this, and this is why there is a secret understanding between him and her. But he also knows that this is bait—this secret he keeps to himself.

  That nothing more wonderful, nothing more delicious, nothing more seductive can be devised than a woman—this the gods guarantee, and their need, which sharpened their inventiveness, is in turn their guarantee that they have staked everything and in forming her nature have prevailed upon the powers of heaven and of earth.

  I abandon the myth. The concept of man corresponds to the idea of man. Therefore one needs only one man in existence and no more. 212The idea of woman, however, is a generality that is not exhausted by any woman. She is not ebenbürtig [of equal standing] with man but subsequent, a part of man and yet more perfect than he. Whether the gods took a part of him [VI 75] while he was sleeping213 out of fear of waking him by taking too much, or whether the gods divided him in half and the woman was the other half,214 it was the man, after all, who was divided. Consequently it is in subdivision that she first became equal with man. She is a deception, but this she is only in the next moment and for the one who is deceived. She is finiteness, but at her beginning she is finiteness raised to the highest power in the delusive infinity of all divine and human illusions. As yet there is no deception. But a moment later, and one is deceived. She is finiteness; thus she is a collective noun; the one woman is the many. Only the devotee of erotic love understands this, and that is why he knows how to love many, is never deceived, but imbibes all the sensual pleasures the cunning gods managed to prepare. This is why woman cannot be exhausted in any formula but is an infinitude of finitudes. Trying to conceive the idea of woman is like gazing into a sea of misty shapes continually forming and reforming, or like becoming unhinged by looking at the waves and the foam maidens who continually play tricks, because the idea of woman is only a workshop of possibilities, and once again for the devotee of erotic love this possibility is the eternal source of infatuation.

  215So the gods formed woman as delicate and ethereal as if of the mists of a summer night, and yet rounded as ripe fruit; light as a bird although she bears a world of desire within her, light because the play of forces is unified in the invisible center of a negative relationship in which she relates herself to herself; slim and firm, with clearly defined contours and yet to the eye surging with the undulations of beauty; complete and yet continually as if she were just now finished; cool, delicious, refreshing as the new-fallen snow, and yet blushing in tranquil transparency; happy as a pleasantry that lets one forget everything, soothing as the objective of the desiring, gratifying by being herself the incitement of the desiring. And the gods planned the situation in such a way that man, upon seeing her, would be as amazed as one who sees himself and yet in turn as if he were familiar with this sight, as amazed as one who sees himself in the reflection of perfection, as amazed as one who sees what he never suspected and yet sees, so it seems, what must necessarily have occurred to him, sees what is necessary in life, and yet sees it as the riddle of life. 216It is this very contradiction in man’s amazement that coaxes out [elske frem] the desire, while his amazement pushes him closer and closer until he cannot stop looking, cannot stop feeling familiar with this, yet without really daring to come closer, even if he cannot stop desiring.

  217Having imagined woman’s shape and character, the gods [VI 76] themselves feared lest they not be able to express it. But what they feared more was woman herself. For fear of one who is in on the secret and could spoil the stratagem, they did not dare let her know how beautiful she was. Then the crown was placed on the work. The gods finished her, but they hid everything from her in the ignorance of innocence, and hid it once again from her in the impenetrable secrecy of modesty. She was finished, and victory was certain. Inviting she was, and that she was by being elusive, constraining by her fleeing, irresistible by her own continual resisting. The gods rejoiced. Nothing as alluring as woman had been devised in the world, and nothing is as absolutely alluring as innocence; no temptation is as entrapping as that of modesty, and no deception as matchless as woman. She knows nothing, and yet her modesty possesses an instinctive presentiment; she is separated from man, and the partition of modesty is more decisive than Aladdin’s sword that separates him from Gulnare;218 and yet the devotee of erotic love who, like Pyramis,219 places his ear against the partition of modesty senses dim intimations of all the passion of desire behind it.

  This is how woman tempts. Human beings set out the most excellent fare they have as food for the gods, they know nothing better to offer; in the same way woman is a display fruit; the gods knew of nothing to compare with her. She is, she is right here, present, close to us, and yet she is infinitely far away, concealed in modesty until she herself betrays her hiding place—how, she does not know; it is not she, it is life itself that is the cunning informer. She is roguish, like a child at play who peeks out of its hiding place, and yet her roguishness is inexplicable,
for she herself is unaware of it, and she is always enigmatic—enigmatic when she hides her eyes, enigmatic when she sends out the emissary of a glance that no thought, even less any word, is able to pursue. And yet if the glance is the soul’s “interpreter,” where then is the explanation when the interpreter himself speaks incomprehensibly. She is calm, like the stillness of evening when not a leaf is stirring, calm, like a consciousness that as yet is not aware of anything; her [VI 77] heart beats as regularly as if it did not exist, and yet the devotee of erotic love who listens with stethoscopic probity discovers the dithyrambic beat of desire as an unconscious accompaniment. Carefree as a breeze, contented as the deep sea, and yet as full of longing as the unexplained always is. My friends, my mind is appeased, indescribably appeased! I perceive that my life, too, expresses an idea, even if you do not understand me. I, too, have spied out the secret of life; I, too, serve something divine,220 and certainly I do not serve for nothing. Just as woman is a deception by the gods, so is this a true expression of her wanting to be seduced; and just as woman is not an idea, so also is the truth of this, that the devotee of erotic love wants to love as many as possible.

  What a sensual pleasure it is to enjoy the deception without being deceived, only the devotee of erotic love understands. How blissful it is to be seduced, only woman really knows. I have learned this from woman, even though I have not allowed any time to explain it to myself but have held my ground and served the idea by a breach as abrupt as death’s, because a bride [en Brud] and a breach [et Brud] correspond to one another as female and male.221 Only woman knows this, and knows it along with her seducer. No married man comprehends such a thing. Nor does she ever speak to him about it. She is reconciled to her fate; she suspects that it has to be this way, that she can be seduced only once. This is why she is really never angry with her seducer. That is, if he actually has seduced her and expressed the idea. A broken marriage vow and the like are, of course, pure nonsense and no seduction. Thus far it is not such a great misfortune for a woman to be seduced, and it is her good fortune if she is seduced. A girl who has been seduced in a first-rate way can become a first-rate wife. If I myself were not good at being a seducer, even though I, when I consider myself along those lines, [would] deeply feel my inferiority, if I wanted to be a married man, I would always choose a woman who has been seduced, lest I should begin by seducing my wife. Marriage, too, expresses an idea, but in relation to this idea what is absolute in relation to my idea is a matter of indifference. Therefore, marriage should never be established with a beginning, as if it were the beginning of a seduction story. This much is certain, that for every woman there is a corresponding seducer. Her good fortune is precisely to meet him.

  With marriage, on the other hand, the gods prevail. Then the once-upon-a-time seduced woman walks through life at her husband’s side, occasionally looks back wistfully, reconciles herself to her fate, until she has reached the borderland of life. She dies, but she does not die in the same sense as the man dies, she evaporates and dissolves into that indefinable something from which the gods formed her; she vanishes like a [VI 78] dream, like a temporary character whose time is up. For what else is woman but a dream, and yet the highest reality. This is how the devotee of erotic love sees her and in the moment of seduction leads her and is led by her outside of time, where as an illusion she belongs. With a husband she becomes temporal, and he through her.

  Wonderful nature, if I did not admire you, a woman would teach me to do so, for she is the Venerabile [something worthy of veneration]222 of life. Glorious you made her, but even more glorious in that you never made one woman like another. With man the essential is the essential and thus always the same; with woman the accidental is the essential and in this way an inexhaustible heterogeneity. Brief is her glory, but the pain is also quickly forgotten, and when the same glory is offered to me again, it is as if I had not even felt the pain. True, I also am aware of the unloveliness that can appear later, but in that case she is not with her seducer.223

  The signal was given to rise from the table. It took but a sign from Constantin; with military timing the participants understood one another when it was a matter of right-about-face. With the invisible baton, which in Constantin’s hand was as pliable as a divining rod [Ønskeqvist, wishing twig], he touched them once again in a fleeting reminiscence to remind them of the banquet and the mood of enjoyment that had been partially vanquished by the speakers’ trains of thought, so that, as in an echo, the sounds of festivity that had vanished might reverberate over the guests in the brief instant of resonance. In farewell, he saluted them with a full glass; he emptied it; he hurled it against the door in the back wall. The others followed his example and consummated this symbolic act with the solemnity of an initiate. Thus the pleasure of breaking off had its due, this imperial pleasure that, even though briefer than any other, is still more liberating than any other. Enjoyment ought to begin with a libation, but this libation whereby one hurls away the glass into annihilation and oblivion and, as if in mortal danger, passionately tears oneself [VI 79] away from every memory, this libation is to the gods of the underworld. 224One breaks off, and it takes strength to do it, even more strength than to cut a knot in two, for the obstacle of the knot provides the passion, but the passion it takes to break off, one must oneself provide. In a certain external sense the result may be the same, but artistically they are poles apart—whether something stops, comes to an end, or it is broken off by means of a free act, whether it is a happening or a passionate decision, whether it is over like the schoolmaster’s ditty when there is no more or something caused by pleasure’s Caesarean incision, whether it is a triviality everyone has experienced or that secret that escapes most people.